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In India, the exponential growth in
mobile phone use in recent years has generated great interest in the devices’
potential benefit as a health care tool. In the current study, the researchers
used mobile phone reminders to encourage adherence to antiretroviral therapy
(ART) among HIV-positive patients in a Bangalore tertiary hospital’s
infectious-disease clinic.
Between March and June 2010, 139
HIV-positive adults who had been taking regular ART for at least one month
received weekly reminders about treatment adherence. The reminders were a
weekly interactive call and a non-interactive neutral pictorial short message
service (SMS).
Following four weeks of the
intervention, interviews were conducted to learn participants’ perceptions
regarding preference, usefulness, potential stigma, and privacy concerns.
Eighty-nine percent of participants were urban, and 85 percent had received at
least a secondary education.
Of 744 calls made during the
intervention, 545 (76 percent) were received by patients. All patients received
the weekly SMS reminder. One month later, 90 percent said the reminders were
helpful, and they did not feel their privacy was violated.
Most patients (87 percent) preferred
the telephone call reminders; 11 percent preferred the SMS reminders alone.
Fifteen percent never viewed any SMS reminders; only 59 percent viewed them
all. Some patients said another person had inadvertently received their
reminder call (20 percent) or SMS (13 percent); despite this, participants
“denied any discomfort or stigma.”
“Mobile phone interventions are an
acceptable way of supporting adherence in this setting,” the authors concluded.
“Voice calls rather than SMSs alone seem to be preferred as reminders. Further
research to study the influence of this intervention on adherence and health
maintenance is warranted.”
The Friends of AIDS Foundation is
dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and
empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV
virus. To learn more about The Friends of AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.
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